The Impressionist

Author - Hari Kunzru ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book was reviewed on 1-Aug-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book The Impressionist by . Am I the only person in the world who found this unreadable? Let´s just talk about the beginning, which should be the most engaging and interesting part of any novel.
I managed to force myself through the first chapter, and I can´t imagine why anyone would want to read this for pleasure, let alone give it a $1.8-million advance.
This guy Forrester pitches his tent at the bottom of a gully in the desert, proving that he is a complete fool and not the outdoorsman that the narrator implies he is. He knows nothing about the outdoors. Supposedly he is saved from the flood by a skinny 19-year-old girl who is an opium addict, and who drags him into a cave furnished with all kinds of pots and pans, yet no one is there. Yeah, right. She seduces him and they have sex three times. Yeah, right. (People on opium have zero sex drive, and these people are cold and wet, which makes sex very unlikely.) Then he walks out to the flood and jumps on a tree in the deluge and is carried away. Sure. Does that make sense? Not in the real world.
Is this supposed to be magic realism, or fantasy? If so, why not have them fly through the air? The book leads me to think it´s realistic, then it isn´t.
Actually, I think the point of the scene is that the girl gets pregnant and she is the mother of the central character in the book. If you get that, I
think it´s supposed to be mildly amusing, in a dry sort of way. Doesn´t work for me. I don´t get the appeal. And I sure don´t get the big advance.¤

2) Hardcover Book The Impressionist by . Identity, especialy one that is formed in a strange borders of post-colonial world, is one of the most popular themes in the contemporary literature. To question oneself about the meaning of ones own behavior, murky rituals and repetitive language, is to question onself about the whole wide world out there. Question that is not easily putted, and one that is almost impossible to answer in some satsifactory way.

The Impressionist is Kunzru´s debut novel, and from the beginning he struggles with these questions. Did he succeded? This book present strange mix of influences, literary references, satire, irony, anthropology, and cultural criticism. It is hard, even for an experienced writer to hold all these toughts in a compact form. Kunzru often looses himself, and his stray thoughts often stray too much. In a way, that may be interpreted as a good enough show of how complex life complexity really is.

Book can be divided in two rough sections, one which deals with India, and the other which deals with England, Great Empire. While India part is crammed with much action, movement, sexuality and great deal of sarcasm, England part is much more even-tempered. It is slow, tactful, "academic" and more of an essay than novel. Implications of these two styles are more than obvious.

Social chameleon, what Kunzru´s main character basically is, is trying to gain some foothold in everchangin world. To this end, Kunzru leads him in great manner in giant story line than spans time and space and philosophy of life.

This would be a great book if Kunzru succeded in keeping all of it´s parts together. Someplace (many times) in the book you just get that feeling where you understand what they are telling you, but the words simply don´t correspond to it, or they are unescusable and definitely misplaced. This sloppy manner destroys the body of text, and sometimes you can´t shake this feeling that you are holding ragged piece of cloth that once was a kashmire shirt.¤

3) Hardcover Book The Impressionist by . I just read "The Impressionist" and closed the book with a sense of real awe. I couldn´t put it down. I thought it was damn near brilliant as a literary vaudeville, a satire, a romance novel, a mystery and most or worst of all, a story of manners. Some on this thread have puffed themselves up and discussed the implications of Joseph Conrad´s influence on Kunzru as if that was a bad thing. I don´t know if Kunzru read Conrad or not because the whole idea of a "Lord Jim" ending that seems to upset at least one of these amateur critics is to me beyond the pale.
I have on my nightstand his second book, "Transmission" and can´t wait to crack the cover. Even more thrilling, he has a new book coming out within a month and that just about makes my whole summer reading list a triumph. It certainly wasn´t flawed and it certainly was not overly ambitious.
¤

4) Hardcover Book The Impressionist by . Unlike some other reviewers, I found this book to have some substantial things going for it. The four star rating stems from a strong appreciation for writing skills tempered with some hesitation concerning the plot.

Essentially this is it. Kunzru portrays a Woody Allen-esque character whose lack of personal identity (roots, tradition, sense of place) creates a longing for acceptance in the class-ridden era which he portrays.

What Kunzru does, very effectively, is remind us that there is actually not that much difference between the rigid, overt class system of Raj India and the more subtle, but no less deadly, system present in England. The dynamics register in different ways but the effect is the same. Along the way he casts his main character as a faceless man whose only hope for "being" is to assume an identity, not having one himself. I am reminded of Jack Lemmon once stating that the only time he had a "self" was when he took one as a role in a movie. Without traditions, without roots, the main character survives by moving timidly, acting with just enough boldness to be accepted but never to the point of being noticed. His fear is being found out.

There are clever things done in the plot and it is not devoid of humor. But the main characteristic of this book, in my opinion, is the absence of heroes. There are no noble characters, all are fallen and most are fallen significantly. I found no character which elicited more than pity and none to admire. In this I think Kunzru fails because there are people out there to admire and it is unbalanced to portray the era as totally given over to selfishness.

Lastly, I think Kunzru has a bigger story to tell. I think that he manages to convey to us that, in his opinion, identity is a matter of externals. That we conform and adapt to externals and that the absence of these externals leave us rootless and lost. I don´t agree entirely but I think he presents his case pretty well.

It´s a book to make you think. Definitely not light weight fare but if you count the cost it is worth it.¤

5) Hardcover Book The Impressionist by . Hari Kunzru´s debut is reminiscent of John Irving´s "Son of the Circus" with its "East meets West" main character and his many comic escapades. There´s a little "Poisonwood Bible" thrown in as the same character, in one his guises, ends up with a demented missionary in "darkest Africa." The writing shifts from the ridiculous to the sublime--overall an entertaining read bringing promise of more to come from a talented young (30-year old) author.¤

6) Hardcover Book The Impressionist by . Fathered, through circuitous circumstances, by an Englishman, Pran Nath Razdan, the boy who will become the Impressionist, was passed off by his Indian mother as the child of her husband, a wealthy man of high caste. Growing up spoiled in a life of luxury just down river from the Taj Mahal, at fifteen the news of Pran´s true parentage is revealed to his father and he is tossed out into the street--a pariah and an outcast. Thus begins an extraordinary, near-mythical journey of a young man who must reinvent himself to survive--not once, but many times.

Imprisoned by a brothel and dressed in women´s clothes, his sensuous beauty is exploited as he is made to become Rukhsana, a pawn in a game between colony and empire. To a depraved British Major he becomes Clive, an object of desire taught to be a model English schoolboy. Escaping to Bombay he begins a double life as Robert, dutiful foster child to a Scottish missionary couple and as Pretty Bobby, errand boy and sometime pimp to the tawdry women of the city´s most notorious district.

But as political unrest begins to stir, Pran finds himself in the company of a doomed young Englishman-an orphan named Jonathan Bridgeman. Having learned quickly that perception is a ready replacement for reality, Pran soon finds himself on a boat bound for Southampton where, with Bridgeman´s passport, he will begin again. First in London, then at Oxford, the Impressionist hones his chameleon-like skills, making himself whoever and whatever he needs to be to obtain what he desires.

From Victorian India to Edwardian London, from an expatriate community of black Americans in Paris to a hopeless expedition to study a lost tribe of Africa, Hari Kunzru´s unforgettable novel dazzles with its artistry and wit while it challenges with its insights into what it means to be Indian or English, black or white, and every degree that lies between them.¤

7) Hardcover Book The Impressionist by . The antihero of The Impressionist, Hari Kunzru´s daringly ambitious first novel, is half English and half Indian. In the Raj of the 1920s, the racial and social divides are enormous, but Pran Nath is able to bridge them, crossing from one side to another in a series of reinventions of his own personality. He begins as the spoiled child of an Indian lawyer, but circumstances thrust him out of his pampered adolescence into the teeming and dangerous life of the streets. After a bewildering period as one of the pawns in Machiavellian political and sexual scheming in the decadent court of a minor Maharajah, he escapes to Bombay. There he is taken up by a half-demented Scottish missionary and his wife, but Pran Nath prefers to slope off to the city´s red-light district whenever he can. During a time of riot and bloodshed, the chance of re-creating himself as an English schoolboy destined for public school and Oxford presents itself, and he takes it. But this is not his final transformation.

In certain ways Kunzru is almost too ambitious. There is so much crammed onto the pages of The Impressionist that some of it, almost inevitably, doesn´t work as well as it might. However, as the shapeshifting Pran Nath moves from one identity to another, knockabout farce mixes with satire, social comedy with parody. And beneath the comic exuberance and linguistic invention, there is an intelligent and occasionally moving examination of notions of self, identity, and what it means to belong to a class or society. --Nick Rennison, Amazon.co.uk¤

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